Dawn's Early Light

Folks, that is a picture of dawn. And I was awake for it. It was particularly pretty, so I took a picture of it. I'm not really a morning person, so it makes me proud that I manage to get up before dawn several days a week to work out. I know most people get up before dawn once winter comes around, and Rish is the only person who will be really freaked out by a photo of dawn, but I couldn't help posting about it. Rish has probably seen dawn from the other end of the day more often than most people do, though, so I guess he's got that on all us poor saps who get up early in the morning.

Another Version

Another version, because I can't get the song out of my head.

October

This song comes to mind every year at this time.



And it's so very true, as depressing as it is, it's all true.

Failure

My last post on here was all about my super new goal that I was going to do in the month of October. I said I'd take a day or two off, and get right on it. That day or two stretched into almost three weeks. Today is the 20th, and I've done nothing this entire friggin' month. Grrrr.

I'm amazed with how easy it is to blow it. It was such a big time effort for me to write 500 words for a whole month, but it took no effort at all to let that progress piss away.

But there's no sense bemoaning the past. I've just got to look forward, and get back on the horse.

So, today, I wrote 681 new words on my story, "Sepia Tone Prison." It's coming very close to a finish. I've only got two scenes left to write, but they'll probably be worth 2,000 more words, making this story over 10,000 words long. Too long for most places, but oh well. It was the story I wanted to tell.

I'm going to write again tomorrow as well, and see if I can't get this story done soon. As soon as I finish it, I'll get a story submitted somewhere, then start writing another one. I've learned that it's go go go. If you take your foot off the pedal, the engine stalls. What a crappy car I've got, huh?

My New Challenge For October

I took the weekend off, and now it's time to start into the new challenge for the new month.

For an author, the biggest danger isn’t that someone might not like your work–-it’s that they might never encounter it at all.

That is a quote from this blog post that I read a few weeks ago. There were many other interesting things to learn from it. They asked several editors to tell people why they needed to stop rejecting their stories before they even get sent out to an editor. I know that I'm guilty of this. I've sent a couple of stories out, but barely any. I've whined on the show about how it's hard to take rejection, but the only real rejection I get is from myself.

So, in October, I have a new challenge for myself. That is to take all the stories that I have written in the last few years, and submit them to publications. And, in the spirit of not rejecting myself, I'm going to start with the highest profile publications and work my way down from there. I'll probably submit several of Rish's stories as well, once I've burned through all of mine. Because, really, it won't take long. I don't have that many.

So, tune in here each day, my friends, and follow my progress, if you'd like. I'll report which of my stories was sent to which place, and then, eventually, I'll let you know what happened with it. You can all join me in the fun of butting my head against the wall until I finally bust through the bricks to see what is on the other side of that wall. I've heard the grass is really green over there. No, I mean, like, a lot greener than it is over here.

I'm going to do my best to continue to write 500 words a day as well. And, if I can manage, I may even up it to 750 or perhaps 1,000. But while I'm sending out stories, I'll stick with 500. Won't take but a week or so to get them all out. Looking at my stories folder, I have this list:

1. The Battle Of The Ideas
2. Last Contact
3. The Mirror Sometimes Lies
4. Sepia Tone Prison (nearly finished, not quite)
5. Through The Din Of Silence
6. Queen Bea (which I suppose has to be a reprint since we published it for BMSE 2010)
7. The Tenth Album
8. Little Caesars Ghost
9. Straw and Sawdust (Another BMSE, 2009 this time, maybe I'll rework this one before sending it out)
10. Euthanasia

And maybe a couple of other reprints or some really old stories. Although, I don't know if I want to go as far back as 2002 in search of stories to submit.

The Trial of Thomas Jefferson

Marshal Latham had me over to do a few voices on the story he's produced for you to listen to. This is for his new podcast Journey Into...

It's a pretty cool story, and I play a Nazi soldier, and The Chairman. Rish Outfield, Abigail Hilton, and Dave Thompson are also over there lending their voices with me.

Head over and subscribe to his podcast, and click the play button below to listen right here and now.

My Annual Flower Post

Today, I went to the front yard and pulled the dried out stalks of our sunflowers, and threw them away. Summer's over, school's been back for more than a month, and it's starting to get cold at night (still warm during the days, but that won't last long). Seems as though I've waited a little too long to write my annual post with the pictures that I took of our flowers from our garden. So, here it is.

This year, with my wife and I both working full-time, we weren't able to get many flowers planted. Nature had to do most of the work for us. We have a few perennials in the yard, and they bloomed beautifully. Then there were the sunflowers. They reseed themselves for us. They didn't grow where we wanted them to, but they made up the majority of our flowers for the year, so we just let them grow and flourish.

As you can probably tell, I really like the red ones.

And this is my other favorite, the really big-headed ones.

I pulled the heads off of several of my favorite sunflowers, and scraped the seeds from them out into the spot where we want the sunflowers to grow next year. We'll see if the birds got them all before they could take root or not. Hopefully we'll have tons of sunflowers again next year, and they'll be mostly my favorite kinds.

These lilies are a few of our perennials.

Another perennial is our clematis bush.

It really bloomed well, and made some beautiful flowers.

And it creeped its way over the trellis that my wife put out for it, and a few vines found their way to our bedroom window. I thought that was interesting.

Lastly, is our trumpet vine, which has grown quite large this year.

It provided us with no end of fun, because of the hummingbirds that would come to visit and drink from its nectar each day. We tried to get some pictures of the birds, but that never worked well. (I posted those earlier this year if you want to see crappy pictures of hummingbirds, just scroll back a few pages, too lazy to find and link). Here are pictures of the flowers themselves.

Day 29 & 30

Yesterday, I wrote 536 words. Today, 629. And that's that. I win. 500 words a day challenge for one whole month is over, and I win. Sure, I had to fudge it a little here and there. Making up for days when I'd blown it. But I wrote at least 500 words for every day in September.

I wrote one full story, and I'm getting really close to finishing the second, which is long enough to count as a novella. I think I'm only three or four scenes from the end. If anyone would like to read them, let me know, and I'll email them to you. Just ask, the email address to ask me at is editor at dunesteef dot com.

I'm going to keep on with this. But I have a new challenge planned for October. I'll let you know about it tomorrow. For now, I've got to get to bed.